Got Some Killer Westwood One 7 1/2 IPS Tapes Need Help Flipping

Them over. You know tail out flipped upside down or something. I don't know how to do it, the way they stored them, I did do one and messed it up a bit, so there has to be a better way. Fortunatly It's messed up in the applause area of a live tape.

I'm just learning what Westwood One is, It looks like they where licensed to go to venues and record live shows. After doing so they would make tapes to send out for radio broadcasting. It also appears they have added commercials as the one most likely paying for this. Some are marked commercial free. Most these tapes are dated from the 90- 93, analog in a digital age how cool is that?

If there are tail out the most gentle method is just to "play them". Of course you won't want to listen to them as you do this.

They can be rewound but that is not as gentle and will result is a less smooth packing of the tape.

Are you sure of the format, 1/4 track or half track? Mono or stereo?

At one time (way back in the reel to reel tape days) I was the recording and duplication engineer for a local radio program that went out to about 20 radio stations via reel to reel tape and the post office.

I had tapes returned to me wound in just about any manner that you can imagine.

I take it that they will not play as is. I would play one all the way to the end, put the full reel on the supply side and see what happens.

Sounds about right. I would have started high school in '88, and I do remember on the weekends listening to the local classic rock station to programs much like this, and I do also remember "you are listening to the Westwood One radio network" or something like that. Heck, I might have listened to some of the programs you have! I want to say that there were similar programs aired even earlier than when I was in high school as well, so while those are the dates on your tapes, there were probably more before that.

Leader tape can be your friend in certain situations (at the beginning and or the end of a tape if needed).

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I had a bad backlash rewinding it trying to control it with my hand slowing it down. I routed it to flip the tape over, the tape folded and rolled, it looked stretched. I flattened it out pretty good, and as I said it was between songs, and I got it flipped.

Since most are 7" reels, recorded at 7 1/2 ips some have commercials, I'm thinking of editing and putting them on 10" reels

Ok, maybe take a pause for a second.
Are they tails out: ie, stored immediately after playing, and must be re-wound to the head before next play? If so, leave them this way as it's the best way to ensure an even tape pack for storage, (which minimizes edge damage chances) and minimizes print-thru (which is the primary reason for storing tails-out). 7.5 ips HT (half-track) stereo out of a broadcast house would call for tails-out storage as the norm.

Or are they 'flipped', somehow a half-twist was introduced, causing the oxide to be on the side away from the head instead of in contact with the head? Best approach is to verify the half-twist exists, and introduce a correcting twist between capstan and take-up reel, and play it thru at normal or double speed to correct. But this is a pretty unlikely scenario, especially on a whole stack of tapes.

If your deck can't rewind a reel with proper tension and tracking, it's time for maintenance/adjustment. The thumb-on-flange method is obviously risky to the tape.

I don't now if they are flipped, the lead in was very very long on the first tape and they don't have leaders...wast of tape not normally found. The first one was tale out, I fixed and played it. The deck is fine, it all has to do with the way I routed the tape in order to try and flip it, that wasn't needed in the first place. The second tape was correct and all I had to do is mount it and hit play, but then again, very long lead in.

Ok now as I search and search I'm finding out how rare these tapes are. Even products by Westwood One are fairly rare on the market, CDs seem to be around in good numbers, followed less so by records. When it comes to these tapes, numbers are extremely low in comparison to even the records.

Most recordings I see prior to the 90s are multi disc LP records.
After the 90s most are CDs but still quiet a bit of records being put out.

I'm under the impression the radio stations had a choice in formats...
Tapes seem to only be offered around 91-94, but the concert might have been from 1990-1993.
So there was a three year overlap that a radio station had the choice between three formats. Out of these three clearly the LP and CD was an easier option for the DJ to use, so they produced and sold more of them.

I have only seen a few tapes on eBay in current listings under different searches. Google searching doesn't show much, but old eBay listings & Westwood Ones Website. Funny though this thread is now in the google search in less than a few hours. I got one google hit for a tape on Discogs and went there. Once there I searched Westwood One's label. In that they have 795 titles listed, and only a few tapes posted, and a couple have a Youtube vid posted.Westwood Onehttps://www.discogs.com/label/54312-Westwood-One

I looked at the tapes posted and there isn't any sale history, most the records I looked at have no sales history either. BTW Discogs even with their crack down on unofficial products saved these as Partially Unofficial.

Wow... very cool. Is there a back story to how you came to own them and where they came from?

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My record store, the owners are and where radio DJs. Tommy Tune was a DJ up until the mid 80s and then he opened the record store in 1985. His brother Robert live out of town now but comes back to work here and there at the store.

When Roberts in town he likes to clean up and totally pusses old gear setting it up, organizes the store. They were cleaning out the back room yesterday, Tommy came out with a file box full of these tapes and asked me if I was interested and tossed a price to me. I didn't now what they where really and thought the price was high, but he explained what they where. I was trying to figure out if they where just home recordings of radio but with the paper work and I seen they where 7.5 ips, they would work on my deck so I got them. Even though a lot of the music is not in my wheel house, I felt they where professionally recorded plus the fact it's live and probably doesn't exist anywhere else.

I don't now if they are flipped, the lead in was very very long on the first tape and they don't have leaders...wast of tape not normally found. ... (snip) ...but then again, very long lead in.

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The leader-less state (and associated blank tape at head and tail) is because these are dubs, not masters. Once the show was recorded, the distribution dubbing was accomplished outside the recording studio itself, since there were probably upwards of 100 or so recipients of the tapes (vs. LP, cassette?, or network distribution). Dubbing likely took place on a Garner or Magnefax-type duplicator: (Do a Google image search on magnefax for some other views.)
...which was commonly used by studios for 1/4" dubs in medium volume. It would spool tape off of pancakes, and directly onto the reels you have. Tails-out, for print-thru protection. Common capstan for speed accuracy. No one would stop and leader-up a dub, unless the station itself wanted to do it. But for a one-play program, they would just cue it up and roll it. The head and tail are so long because the machine runs at 60 ips (play and record on same capstan/same speed) so it's flyin'. And back then, tape was cheap. (Similar machines would be used for music tape duplication in that time period, too. Higher-end dub houses would use individual machines; sound quality could be higher, but a more complex project due to individual machine maintenance matters.)

The same type of Magnefax/Garner system was used for medium-run cassette duplication, from pancake to pancake (yes, often without flanges on either) that was subsequently loaded into C-0 cassette shells by automatic splicers. Out-of-band audio tones were used to determine when program began and ended.

Either system could be configured with either a reel-based master (just right off the mastering machine) or a loop bin (AKA bin loop) system where the master tape was in a box, without reel, and edited into an endless loop. It could get ugly, but it was very fast.

The likely arrangement for a weekly radio show was reel-based masters, probably mixed on-the-fly (no multitrack + mixdown) and mastered at 7.5ips, then leadered-up and straight to duplication. (They might have rolled an archival 15ips simultaneously.) The show format is basically Casey does intros and segues, then timings are taken and the music is rolled in. (Casey probably didn't sit thru the music himself, but did a bunch of V/O and it was put together without him.) If the engineer makes a mistake in timing or levels, just back up a bit, try again, and edit the master as required as you're done. These were the days of mostly non-automated studios, no timecode controllers for audio work, definitely no digital audio workstations or anything. Voice talent skills, engineering skills, and a good timing rundown for script length, tune intro/outro length, and overall show length ruled the day. Pop in the national spots and promos, leave holes for the local ads, (or note places to stop tape) then dub and ship. 3 or 4 hour show probably took two full shifts to dub and prep for shipping. Probably a half-day in recording V/O, then a day putting the show together.

Chip

On edit: Sorry, change all the "Casey" bits to whoever the host of that show is. Thinking American Top 40, etc...